Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

by Warwick Gibson

  The meeting today was held in the comms room at the back of one of Izem's new barns, a room which had become the de facto SAS office. Jo leaned in beside Don, laughing at the way Mosha had set up his boss. It was obvious to everyone in the room how she lit up when she stood beside him. Something was going on.

  Then Jo's face fell as she remembered her secondary place in the military scheme of things, and she stood just a little too stiffly apart from him.

  Mosha groaned inwardly. Why didn't she just shag their big, dumb boss so they could all get on with more important things? He'd seen Don make a shambles of his love life in the past, mostly by not paying it enough attention.

  "What's the latest on Graham?" said Don quietly, and the whole room turned to look at Jo.

  "He's stable after the operation," she said briskly, now on safer ground, "and he should be out of danger soon. Mokrani is checking on him several times a day. We won't really know how he's doing until we take him out of the coma."

  She was refering to the operation to remove Graham's arm. There had been too much damage, and too much risk of infection, to try and save it. Without the hope of prosthetics, and future operations to restore movement, the arm would have been just a crippled weight. She realised once again how many of the things they had taken for granted would no longer be available to them.

  Mokrani was the Imazighen doctor, sent by Izem to be trained in Algiers when he was young. Fortunately he had a fair bit of surgical experience, where Jo as an ambulance paramedic had normally left that to the hospitals.

  One of the Imazighen women came in, bringing an urn of coffee and a small plate of the typical almond cookies. When she had placed the urn and the cups to one side, she knelt beside Jo, and tied a pale, thin ribbon around her upper arm. Don noticed Jo had several there already.

  "What's going on?" he said, when the woman left. Jo looked embarrassed.

  "I can't stop them doing it," she said. "It's a symbol of Al Kahina, a religious and military leader during an invasion of Imazighen lands in the eighth century. Apparently she was quite a woman."

  "Mark of honour," said Dassin to Don, "because she save your life." It was quite a speech for the slightly built electronics specialist. Don had noticed Dassin becoming more forthright now that Jo had started leading the comms team. Must be something about role models, he reasoned.

  "Can we download field notes directly to your new database?" he asked, referring to the conglomeration of hard drives and CPUs Jo and her team had compiled in recent weeks. Between the contents of every electronic device in the village, and what Jo had pulled off the last vestiges of the internet, they now had their own mainframe: a vast compilation of maps, 'how to' manuals, books on the arts and sciences, and a number of search engines to help them manage the database.

  If civilisation was ever going to rise from its current ashes, they would need all of it, and more. Izem's wind generators and deep-cycle batteries would last another ten years. What they would do after that she didn't know.

  Jo nodded. "We've set up a short-range network for field ops," she said. "No one outside this valley will know we're here."

  Don ticked off the database on his internal list. That tidied up things in the comms room. All that remained now was the promised visit to the buried ship.

  "No point in waiting," he declared, and Izem led them out of the barn and through the village. It wasn't long before they were out in the valley, and surrounded by the crops that grew in the lower parts. The concrete bunker ahead of them looked out of place, surrounded by so much green.

  Izem unlocked the grill entrance, and then they were working their way down the flagstone steps inside the tunnel. It didn't take long to arrive at the landing. There was silence as they looked at the dull metal wall of the buried spacecraft.

  Talking about it was one thing, seeing it was another.

  "The ship has to ID you," said Don, breaking into the moment. He showed his team what to do with the raised section on one side of the airlock.

  Mosha and Bull went through the process without any trouble, but the ship didn't take a sample from Jo.

  "Try again," said Don, and she pressed more firmly on the raised section. Still nothing. Don looked at Izem, who shrugged.

  "There's nothing we can do about it," he said. "This has never happened before. We'll have to figure out what the problem is some other time." He smiled at Jo apologetically.

  "You don't mind waiting?" said Don, but what could she say. It wasn't as if she had a choice.

  Waving them on she leaned back against the wall, and watched the door slide back in its four sections. The others walked through, and the door closed behind them. She felt a surge of annoyance. It was so damned unfair!

  She pushed herself upright and walked over to look at the panels around the airlock. When she came to a set of four panels on the right hand side, arranged like the borders of a box, the space within them began to glow. She backed up hurriedly, and a tall form materialised between her and the ship.

  It was so realistic she had to remind herself it wasn't there a moment ago, and it must be some sort of projection. The figure said something in what might have been the Imazighen languge, but it sounded wrong. She looked puzzled.

  "Welcome, Muhim Yu," said the figure in stilted English, and its whole middle section expanded once and then contracted, as if it was taking an enormous breath. It didn't repeat the process, and she wondered if the action was a greeting of some sort.

  The projection was unusually tall and lean, and it looked all wrong for a human body. It was more like driftwood art on a cone-shaped pedestal. There were features of a sort at the top, bumps and protrusions at least, but it was also covered in what looked like old desert robes. They limited what she could see of the creature.

  "Ah, thank you. Um, what do you want?" she managed after a while. The figure seemed to hesitate, as if it didn't understand her meaning.

  "We are at your service," it said eventually, and spread its arms wide. Jo blinked, and then looked again. There were six . . . maybe seven arms, and they were more like flexible hoses than something that had bone in them.

  She was too shocked to be scared, but she had the sudden thought it might be a good idea to be with the others right now.

  "Can you help me join my friends inside the ship?" she hazarded.

  "You have only to ask," said the figure, and the door slid open as it had for the others. Feeling like Alice in Wonderland, Jo stepped hesitantly through.

  46

  Presidential convoy

  Pennsylvania badlands, USA

  On the following day, the President was treated to a grim reminder that time was running out, at least for the previously dominant species on the planet.

  The convoy had worked its way up the last of the Appalachian ranges, re-building the road several times, and stopped in a wide pass at the top. It was a defensible site with clear lines of fire in all directions. Though it was only mid-afternoon, the convoy stopped for the night.

  Survivalists in the woods, a mixture of opportunists and those strongly against any form of authority, were now a constant threat. Patrols had stopped counting the number of intruders they had eliminated. There were drones in the sky and motion sensors in the woods when the convoy stayed anywhere for a length of time.

  "You should see this, Mr President," said security chief Lawson, once a perimeter was established.

  "Right now?" said the President, working through the dispatches that had come in from Mt Weather at the last small town telephone exchange.

  "While it's still light," said Lawson, looking at the sky, and the President nodded.

  An hour later most of the senior staff had joined the President on a minor hike to the edge of the valley, the side that looked out towards Pittsburgh. Lawson had made sure the Presidential party was heavily protected, but he would never be entirely happy with people in the open.

  "We head down into those foothills tomorrow, Garret," said Cleet, "and then we
cut left around Pittsburgh. We want to give it a wide berth."

  The President nodded. It tallied with the maps he had been shown.

  He lifted his head toward the horizon. Pittsburgh still looked like a great city from here. No one could see the collapsed buildings, and survivors killing each other over stores of food, at this distance.

  "If you will look this way, Mr President," said Lawson, directing the group's attention to the valley below them. He pointed to the right, and there was no mistaking the blunt shape of a citadel, rising from a nearby forest lake. The Appalachians were a result of pressure uplift, not volcanic activity, but some of the citadels seemed to be present simply to provide an even spread around the planet.

  The area for a kilometre around the citadel was denuded of all living things, with the blight reaching up and over the ranges on either side of the valley. The ground inside the widening circle looked like it had been ripped up, smashed, and scattered back onto what remained. Much of it lay in long drifts down the slopes.

  "The dead zones, Mr President," said Lawson. "One for every citadel on the planet. No one knows what they're for, or whether they'll eventually cover every bit of land completely."

  It was a subdued party that made its way back to the vehicles. Some of them were beginning to realise they were an anachronism now, part of the old but somehow living on into the new. The President dropped his head, then lifted it again. Surely they could make the old ways count for something!

  The fate of the world occupied his thoughts for most of the night, but the state of the convoy became a more urgent matter the following morning. Lawson bustled in as he was eating breakfast. Escort group one was trapped by insurgents at the Donegal telephone exchange.

  Donegal had looked like a safe point for Escort one to pick up more dispatches from Mt Weather, but it was surrounded by natural woodland, and that provided cover. Whoever was in control of the town these days must have had spotters out – maybe in the old ranger towers in the forests.

  Escort one had been clearing trees and abandoned vehicles off the road as it came in, and that gave the insurgents enough time to gather in force before it even entered the town. Cleet turned around as the comms officer in the back of the President's armoured car took another message.

  "Escort one to base," it began. "Taking heavy small arms fire. Unable to access vehicles from Donegal telephone exchange. Six down, two vehicles fubed. Unable to exfil safely. Request assistance. Repeat, requesting immediate assistance."

  Cleet spoke to Lawson, and they broke camp hurriedly. It took the convoy less than an hour to cover the 26 km to Donegal. It was a miracle in the circumstances, and only possible because Escort one had been along the road before them.

  One of their two multi purpose vehicles, with its heavy blade and roll bars, had to be left behind when they used it once too often as a ram to move trucks the escort group had detoured around.

  The sound of gunfire got louder as the Presidential convoy left the turnpike and entered Donegal's streets. The convoy split into three parts, the middle one slowing while the other two moved up on the flanks.

  "What a shitstorm!" grunted comms on their left flank. They all heard the comment over the open channel. Moments later the President could see what was happening at the old telephone exchange for himself. The front of the building had been converted into a postal service store and stationers, and it was badly damaged.

  Most of the windows were shot out up and down the street. Several of the escort group vehicles, in front of the telephone exchange building, were either smoking or still burning, with the back ends smashed in or peeled open.

  "Sledgehammer," said Lawson, "at least that's what we used to call it."

  He turned toward the front of the armoured car. "Someone's using dynamite. I don't know how they're getting close enough to attach a charge, but that's what the shock waves do to vehicles."

  Cleet nodded. The President was still looking at the destruction.

  "This is a mining and logging area," said Lawson, "there will be plenty of the stuff around. We can also count on these guys having enough ammo stashed away to last them for decades. They won't be giving up in a hurry."

  The insurgents, scattered inside buildings and across roofs, turned their attention onto the Presidential convoy. A burst of gunfire stuttered noisily across the armoured car. The return fire, plus fresh bursts from inside the telephone exchange, drove the attackers back into cover.

  Cleet was surprised at the condition of the buildings. Donegal must have been at a point where two ground waves cancelled each other out during the earthquakes. Most of the town was still standing.

  Someone in the vehicle ahead pointed up, and Cleet could see figures clambering over the rooftops. Then a stick of dynamite exploded ahead of the armoured car, shaking it violently.

  "For Chrissakes, why is everyone having a go at us?" exploded the comms officer. Cleet noticed for the first time how young he was.

  The President suddenly looked tired, and Cleet stepped in to answer the question.

  "Because we look official," he said. "Because the world went to hell on our watch. Because friends and family members of these people are dead, and they want someone to pay for that.

  "Unreasonable as it seems, they think the people in power should have known the earthquakes were coming, and at least have warned them. To them the citadels are just a nightmare to frighten children, and even those who've seen them haven't made a connection to the earthquakes.

  "It's human nature to want someone to blame, and in this case that anger is directed at us."

  The comms officer was silent. The President turned in his seat.

  "It's all right, Kent," he said quietly, "I know how frustrated you are.

  "We mean no harm, and we just want safe passage. The problem is we would never get safe passage, even if we stopped and parleyed."

  "Yessir!" said the comms officer, apparently named Kent. "Thank you, sir!"

  Lawson sent the convoy round the block and into the street behind the telephone exchange. There were fewer people shooting at them there.

  They would set up a perimeter and work out how to extract escort group one, and any of its vehicles that were still viable. But first they would have to take the sting out of the insurgent attack.

  47

  Alien spacecraft

  Atlas Mountains, North-west Africa

  The lighting inside the ship followed Jo smoothly down the long, curving corridor. Eventually she heard the murmur of voices, and a doorway on her right opened of its own accord. She realised the projection that had let her into the ship – she refused to think of it as anything else – was looking after her.

  She stepped through into the same control room where Izem had first shown Don some of the workings of the alien craft. The others turned around in surprise.

  "This creature called you what?" said Izem, once Jo had explained what happened. She struggled to get the pronounciation exactly right.

  "I think that's an old Imazighen dialect," he said thoughtfully, "must be a hundred and fifty years old at least."

  "What does it say?" asked Jo.

  "Muhim Yu means 'Great Mother'," said Izem, "though the sense is more of mother Earth, or an ancestor who was a mother of nations."

  "You have been busy," said Mosha with a smile, and she wished he would shut up. If she hadn't been busy it wasn't through lack of trying. Bull seemed to miss the joke.

  "Has there ever been a woman here before?" asked Don, and Izem had to think about it.

  "No," he said at last. "Dassin is new to the team, and she hasn't shown any interest in visiting. I don't think she likes the idea of being underground."

  Don nodded. The slight woman had an air of nervousness about her.

  "There have been no other woman involved in our research," said the Imazighen leader, "at least not in my lifetime."

  He paused for a moment.

  "There could have been someone long ago, around a hundr
ed and fifty years. I seem to remember someone special. I would have to check the journals."

  Izem had mentioned the journals before. They were a record of what the Imazighen had discovered about the buried ship over the years, but they were of no use to someone who didn't read Imazighen. Jo had already learned to ask Sufian or Dassin to look in the journals when the comms team had questions about the ship.

  Izem went back to showing Don's team the multi-screens. Jo joined them, fascinated, as the three clear sheets popped up out of the top of the control panel. The strange juxtaposition of one graphic in three different bands of colour suggested a very complex eye structure indeed. Whether the intelligence behind those eyes was equally complex was a good question.

  There were many cases where the best military or social strategists in the world had been beaten by local knowledge. That was humanity's only hope now.

  Jo was back in the buried ship with her comms team, and Don and Izem, later in the day. Dassin had finally been convinced to join them when Sufian described the wonders he had seen. The door had let Dassin straight through without a DNA check, the same as for Jo. They still had no idea what that meant.

  Sufian brought a strange contraption with him. It had a number of dangling wires and adhesive pads hanging from one end, and a strange, rather bulky computer at the other. If Jo didn't know better she might have thought it was a portable machine for an ECG test.

  Sufian had learned in his early experiences of the ship that computer speed was not the problem when trying to make electronic contact, but limited amounts of parallel processing was. He had finally built a computer with over a thousand tiny cores in it, and he was carrying the latest version of this. Jo marvelled at what he had done – it was decades ahead of its time.

  He slid some markers along the top of a panel and lifted a section of it away. Something like an elaborate mechano set was revealed within.

  Jo was trying to follow what he was doing, but she found the 3D patterns shimmering on the walls above the control panel disconcerting. They seemed to be affecting her vision. As Sufian closed an adhesive pad around one of the exposed nodes in the control panel, something like small feet ran across the ceiling above them.